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Category: Christmas

Just before the holidays, I received a delightful letter from one of our younger followers that reads, in part:

Dear Professor,

My name is Virginia, and I am 12 years old. My friends tell me that there is no such thing as Santa Clause. I just know it isn’t true! There has to be a Santa Claus, there just has to be! Who brings the toys? Who eats the cookies? Who smells the living room up like eggnog and rum the night before Christmas? One year, I even saw him putting the presents under the tree!

Professor Sqauwkins, I know you are a very smart man. Could you tell me the truth, please?

Yours truly, Virginia

Well, this letter just tugged at my heart and I had to answer it, for Virginia and all the other children like her, who yearn for magic and are getting primed for religion, so I decided to answer her here:

You gullible little twit, there is almost certainly no such thing as Santa Claus. People might tell you that there is no way to disprove Santa Claus, but once you look at the evidence that something else is the cause of Santa-related phenomena, the likelihood that the fat man really exists becomes vanishingly small.

Haven’t you ever noticed the price tags, clearance aisle stickers and bar codes plastered all over the boxes of the toys you receive, or are you friggin blind? Do you think that a North Pole workshop would bother putting those things on free toys? Ever notice how broke your parents are right after Christmas–and how much more they drink? Put two and two together, you stupid cow. You look at these toys and say that “well, the toys are there, and something caused those toys to be there and we call that cause Santa Claus, but evidence and Occam’s Razor dictate that the simplest answer is probably the correct one; your drunken parents, you git. Haven’t you ever peeked into your parent’s closet just before Christmas?

Look, you can compare the likelihood that a flying sleigh pulled by magic reindeer actually exists to the likelihood that a million slivers of wood and cheap brass thrown into the air would randomly self-assemble into a sleigh. It could happen, but in practice it doesn’t. Any idiot can see that. And while it could be that there is an invisible, magical fat man that can somehow be everywhere at once (or as close to it that it hardly matters), it’s more probable that your dad rented a smelly old costume and ate a few cookies while allowing you to catch a peek, before killing a bottle and high-tailing it back to bed.

What about the man himself? Santa Claus is just a cobbled-together collection of old Pagan fables and mythology ranging from the ancient Roman festivals that gave us gift giving and cookies to the Norse tales of Odin as a gift-giver who traveled around once a year on his many-legged horses, to the English tales of Father Christmas that grew out of the anonymous gift-giving of country Pastors, to similar tales from Scandinavia and nearby regions–all wrapped around the skeleton of Saint Nicholas…the original Santa Clause. Their are so many fables propped up onto that flimsy frame, it’s no wonder Santa Claus is portrayed as fat. When something that is supposed to be true has so many elements stolen from so many places and time periods, the only conclusion to reach is that the whole story is hogwash.

I mean, we would at the very least, be hearing sonic booms all morning long on Christmas as Santa Claus keeps breaking the sound barrier with his sleigh. The absence of sonic booms is positive evidence for the non-existence of Santa Claus because they would have to be present if he existed. Did you get that, or is it too complicated for your ass?

Then we have the testimony of millions of parents who have all come forward to tell us that they made the whole thing up and that they just pretended to be Santa Claus so they could make you happy once a year. They say that it was just a harmless story and that if it gave a few kids some comfort, well, that’s a positive thing isn’t it? If kids want to believe in Santa Claus, what’s wrong with that?

These parents exploit the trust and gullibility of their own children, just to have a force that enables them to have control over them and keep them in line. “Do this or you won’t get any presents this year.” “Don’t be ‘naughty’ (where naughty is anything a parent decides it to be and can change at any time).’ Parents take cruel advantage of a child’s trust and they pay no mind to the fear and psychological damage it causes, and the sense of deep betrayal should a child use his or her reason to come upon the truth. They punish and persecute your older brother if he tries to tell you there is no Santa Claus and the parents of other children will punish and persecute them if they try to speak out. Parents will call them ‘party-poopers’ or just plain mean, but don’t believe them! Parental Santa apologists have had a long time to hone their words well, and use them as weapons against those who would use reason and demand evidence before they will accept something as true.

So no Virginia, you feeble fool. Just because you cannot disprove the existence of Santa Claus, that doesn’t make him real, any more than the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, your favorite cartoon characters or cartoon cereal mascots, magic princesses, or any of the other silly things you believe in. Magic sucks–reality is the only thing that is real, and obviously, putting my boot down on all your pet superstitions is the only thing I live for.

Professor Richard Sqauwkins

Professor Richard Sqauwkins, President of M.O.B. (Atheists for More Obnoxious Blogs), is the mean-spirited, black-hearted absolute ruler of all Atheists. His heart was forged in the blackest pits of Hell and he clawed his way to the top of academia to become the Professor of Evolution on the backs of babies, women, puppy-dogs and fluffy bunny-rabbits. His blood runs colder than Dante’s ninth circle, and he murdered the better angel of his nature. There is nothing sacred that he wouldn’t spill his bile all over. He’s an ‘intellectual.’ You have been warned…